600 MODERN METHODS OF SCIENCE. 
specially formed for its impressions, the physical eye, so is God 
revealed by faith, the soul’s eye. As well might we say that we 
are acquainted with all phenomena of the rays of the sun as 
to arrogate to ourselves the power of limiting the operations of 
faith. 
In these things science is both vain and modest, logical and 
illogical ; as, for example, here is what Dr. Cohn says, in a dis- 
course of his previously referred to: *‘ The deeper natural science 
penetrates from outward phenomena to universal laws, the more 
she lays aside her former fear to test the latest fundamental laws 
of being and becoming, of space and time, of life and spirit :” and 
in the next breath he says: “It is not to be hoped that during the 
next twenty-five years all the questions of science which are at 
present being agitated will be solved. As one veil after another 
is lifted we find ourselves behind a still thicker one, which conceals 
from our longing eyes the mysterious goddess of whom we are 
in search.” 
How Dr. Cohn expects to justify his first statement by his last 
assertion of the increasing thickness of the impenetrable veil is 
more than my logic can divine. 
But in this matter of subjecting faith to physical test by what 
is now commonly called the “ prayer-gauge,” philosophers of the 
most advanced school differ very widely in their opinion; and 
that remarkable pantheist (or pessimist), Edward Von Hartmann 
(probably the most remarkable man of that school since the days 
of Spinosa, who believing only in nature, yet ranks with the old 
patriarchs in his idea of the power of faith, or something next 
akin to it) calls all mankind to ‘‘ combine together in one gram 
‘act of self-abdication, and to resign the very faculty of will by 4 
mighty concert, not of prayer, but of self-renunciation—by the 
help of such means as art and science may apply, and by such 
perfection of the magnetic telegraph as shall enable them all at 
once to will not to will any more, and so to bring all conscious 
personal life to an end by an absorption in the almighty and un- 
conscious spirit.” Not the most ascetic religious devotee could 
exhibit more unbounded confidence in the power of faith subvert- 
ing not only the laws of nature, but nature herself, than is €x- 
_ pressed in those views. 
: : a In fine then, gentlemen, let us stick to science—pure, unadulter- 
ated science—and leave to religion things which pertain to it; for 
